a halo of splendid and inspiring proportions.

* * * * *

The sex organs are the agencies by which every plant and every animal,
each after its kind, brings into the world a succeeding generation. Sex
activity is the result of sex impulse. The imperative need of reproduction
in the scheme of nature is responsible for the presence of sex impulse as
it occurs in every normal adult animal. Were it not for this impulse the
earth would soon become void of life. The human sex impulse is a powerful
one, thought compelling, at times well-nigh overmastering. Though in the
main good, it sometimes produces harmful results. Among the lower animals
the sex function is exercised without thought or knowledge of consequence,
restrained only by the limitations of physical power,--the power to obtain
by might, by conquest. In fully developed mankind, the mind acts as a
constraining force which may control or even completely subdue physical
manifestations of sex impulse.

In adolescents--those who are approaching _maturity_, but are in a
transition state, neither man nor child--sex desire may be as strong as in
those of riper years. Many who are passing through this period know little
or nothing of the forces that pulse through their frames and seem to
consume them with unquenchable fires. These forces are the sex impulses,
the beginning of sex life and sex activity. And as every work of man or
nature while in a state of transition is unstable, less firmly founded,
more easily destroyed or injured than at any other time, so it is that the
adolescent finds himself in greater danger than at any other time of life.
Consumed with incomprehensible desire, which he cannot gratify, he is the
victim of circumstances which cause him distress, yet admit of no relief.